... . By Kathkrink Cecil Thurston. Rlachsvoori. 6s. The title is taken from the quotation In youth, we dream that life is a straight line later, we know it to be a circle in which the present presses on the future, the future on the past. When Anna Solny deserted her home, she tried to forget the old curiosity-shop in which she had spent her childhood, her father, who seemed to place her second ...

... . By Allen Raine. (Hutchinson. 6s.) On the Wings of the Wind is one of those rare love-stories that verge upon folk-lore, and gain in interest accordingly. It is well conceived and ably written, and seldom fails to command the attention. The characters chief and minor-- are excellent, and, in their several ways, entertain ing, be it by their pathos, their love-making, or their ...

... . MR. RALPH HALL CAINE, who has just purchased Dickens's old paper, Household Words, is not, as is generally supposed, a brother of the famous novelist, but his son. Mr. Ralph Caine is scarcely eighteen years of age. His attempt to resuscitate the famous old magazine is certainly one of the pluckiest things in recent journalism. Needless to say, Mr. Hall Caine is watching the venture with the ...

... The Tale of Lai. By Raymond Paton (Chapman and Hall.) Tail Mr. Paton might have spelled it, for Lai is one of the Trafalgar Square lions one totally different, he declares, from all the others, and known by him as the pleasant- faced lion. He ought to know, for it appears that his chambers overlook Trafalgar Square, a square patch of fairyland placed within the hub and centre of the Universe ...

... . By Forrest Reid. (A mold.) The spirit of youth is abroad in this strange and rather sinister story, which reads more like a confession than a narrative. In the author's own words, that spirit, a bundle of complexities and contradictions, may be melancholy, dreamy, and passionate it is admirable and it is base it is full of curiosity it is healthy and it is morbid it is animal and it is ...

... THINGS NEW AT THE THEATRES. THE St. James's Theatre must have been rather surprised when asked to welcome Valentine, a new romantic comic opera, for I do not think the memory of living dramatic critic runs to the time when a work of this kind was presented at the theatre so long associated with Sir George Alexander. And why comedy opera?-- a description obviously bad as grammar, of a ...

... The Way Out. By Mrs. Hbnry Dudbxhy. (.1 fethuen.) Mrs. Dudeney allows herself more than one anomaly in her clever story of criminal egotism. The most remarkable is the love of the artist Buttifant for Jane-- Jane, so plebeian, so grating, so good! His boastful, crude, and precious Jane! Yes, it is the lover himself appraising Jane-- appearing Jane, dead! tn the old chambers in Gray's Inn ...

... By Rudyard Kipling. Macmillan The tact of the curate to his bishop on the subject of his breakfast egg is staler than any egg yet sampled, but it is hard to bury decently. The round world itself is so like that egg, and all that therein is-- including A Diversity of Creatures! Though, indeed, one strams after a more generous estimate than good when remembering such a story as Friendly ...

... . ALSACE, unfortunately, is not a great play, but it has been very well boomed by being banned, possesses substantial merit, and is furiously topical; the style and dignity which mark La Kommandatur are not to be found in it, but most of our public will not miss them, whilst it has plenty of broad obvious humours, and some thrilling moments. The Germans of Alsace are not so outrageously ...

... . By Katherine James. (Chapman and Hall.) This is a Roman romance of the middle nine teenth century. It has been carefully and conscientiously put together. Everything has been remembered which could make it, in the Devonshire phrase, fitty. The heroine brings an English strain to her Italian patriotism. She has a fraud ulent guardian and a faithful nurse. She has two lovers. The Englishman ...

... . By Cf.cil Champain Lewis. The Bodley Head.) is a thing of serpents and flirtation, heavy with the steam of the jungle, curious with native ornament, rich in Burmese idiom. Except as proof of the vagaries and inconsequence of the human heart, it has little to say to life, the life that remains permanent and immutable behind and above dis tinctions of place and race and colour. It marks the ...

... Shadows of the Past. By John Littlejohn. (Chapman a)id Hall.) It is not impossible, though unusual, to find newspaper reports of people wandering like lost sheep who have left, not their tails, but their memories behind them. A great doctor once Spoke sceptically of these cases' they had their reasons, he thought; 'twere folly to remember, and wiser to forget. Do such unfortunates lose their ...